I stood at Mitch’s hospital bedside, my hand in his, praying in silence. The face, the ventilator, the silence in the room, told a grim story. My childhood friend had summoned me to say “Good-bye…” “Please, Mitch, don’t leave us now – the country needs your voice; Rose and the children need you…and God, alone, …
When you write your last chapter, is it written in tears or is it an ode to joy? Mitch and I are children of the Great Depression and we also survived the 20th Century, one of the bloodiest centuries of human history. Ironically, it was war – World War I – that would bring us …
After we would put the newspaper to bed and, if I didn’t have a council meeting or a basketball game or a swimming meet to cover, Mitch and I would sit in the newsroom and discuss our favorite subjects – the old times, national and world news, and politics. And, yes, we were really fortunate …
I was desperately looking for some clues to the unfathomable, unreasonable dismissal from a job I loved and dedicated twenty-four hours a day to in the sardonic smile on my childhood friend’s face. Why would a newly-appointed managing editor fire me without a personal interview or evaluation or reevaluation of my job performance? I …
In the final two months of the year nineteen hundred and sixty, Mitch faced a life-changing challenge, and I learned that I was a “person of interest”. The FBI wanted to learn more about me and my life in the USSR, and I was invited to go to Washington D.C. to meet with the bureau …
I was sitting alone in a booth at a sweetshop on Fort Street waiting for Mitch. We would usually end up there after all of our home basketball games. I’d been in that place more times that I can remember with teammates, fans and their high school girlfriends, chatting about the game, drinking Coke or …
Mitch and I were children of the Great Depression. We were also children whose fathers were born in the Ottoman Empire, in the same mountainous village of Keghi; my father, Boghos, a shepherd in his youth and Mitch’s dad, Kaspar, an intellect whose love of books at an early age would be passed on to …
There are so, so many stories that I can tell about “Mitch and Me”. Most would be, I believe as interesting as those creative tales told by the prolific 19th Century American writer-adventurer, Mark Twain, whose mind and pen introduced the world to the life and times of the unforgettable fictional characters on the …
Mitch and Me: A Posthumous Tribute to a Childhood Friend Read More »
My brother was a big brother in the truest sense. My first real memory of him was when I was between 5 and 7 years old, walking down Solvay Street in the multi-cultural section of Detroit called Delray to the Delray Presbyterian Church. We would go to the second floor gymnasium. He would seat me …
In remembrance of my big brother… Popkin (Robert) Mooradian Read More »
Why would anyone from Ireland want to read a book about an American-born Armenian who repatriated to the USSR in 1947 and spent 13 years of his life behind the Iron Curtain? That was the question I had asked, via e-mail, of B.K. of Cork County, after he sent us an order for a copy …